Last year, following the Covid shutdown members collaborated on some “Do It Yourself” photowalks. Thanks to Ginny Gaynor, Mike Chrun, Sarah Hefty and Richard Hudson we have a lot of resources on our Photowalk Opportunities page. This includes details on locations that can be downloaded.
This would be a good time to revisit what we’ve done in the past and even expand on it. Please share location information and photos that can be included in this gallery. Send the photos to photowalk@wiphotoclub.com and include the subject, capture date, and location. This does not have to be limited to wildflowers.
Jay Olson-Goude has been passionate about photography for nearly fifty years. His work has been published in “New Mexico”, “Mpls/St Paul”,” Men’s Journal” and “Autoweek” magazines and the “Minneapolis StarTribune”, “Saint Paul Pioneer Press”, “Milwaukee Journal Sentinel” and “Red Wing Republican-Eagle” newspapers.
In 1991 Varjabedian received an Emmy Award for his collaboration with award-winning filmmaker Karl Kernberger on the PBS documentary En Divina Luz: The Penitente Moradas of New Mexico. Photographs from this project were published in a book by the same name, with an essay by award-winning author Michael Wallis (1994). His next book, By the Grace of Light: Images of Faith from Catholic New Mexico (1998), came out of the bonds he developed with the people and communities of the Morada Photographic Survey. Recent books of his photographs, published by the University of New Mexico Press, include Four & Twenty Photographs: Stories from Behind the Lens (2007), Ghost Ranch and the Faraway Nearby (2009), which received the prestigious Wrangler Award for Outstanding Photography Book from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, along with Landscape Dreams: A New Mexico Portrait (2012) and Into the Great White Sands(2018).
Award-winning photographer Craig Varjabedian has spent decades photographing the many moods of the magnificent and ever-changing landscape of New Mexico’s White Sands National Monument. His photographs reveal snow-white dunes of gypsum, striking landforms, storms and stillness, panoramic vistas and breathtaking sunsets, intricate windblown patterns in the sand, ancient animal tracks, exquisite desert plants, and also the people who come to experience this place that is at once spectacular yet subtle. Varjabedian’s evocative color images provide the reader with an almost palpable sense of this extraordinary place. 
When Mike first started studying photography in earnest, he was shocked to find that there were universal concepts for compelling compositions that anyone could learn. You’ve probably heard of a few of them: The Rule of Thirds, leading lines, and so on. At first, he was disappointed that attractive compositions appeared to be so prescriptive. “I wanted the art of strong compositions to be, well, art, not a recipe anyone could follow. But I quickly realized that truly great compositions were more elusive; that they required a willingness to bend and break the rules to achieve something extraordinary. In this presentation, you will learn the theories underlying good photographic composition. You may well find that you can immediately improve your images by considering one or more of these ideas. But equally, if not more important, you’ll discover ways to transcend these fundamentals to develop your own, unique style – your distinct, personal photographer’s eye!”
Dr. Mike Shaw is an astrophotographer and the author of “Creative Nightscapes and Time-Lapses,” (2018) and “The Complete Guide to Landscape Astrophotography,” (2017). In addition to his own photography webinars and workshops, he creates inter-active online lessons for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, he teaches in the online Bryan Peterson School of Photography, offers classes at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and leads an interactive “Nightscapes Star Party Live!” weekly on Slooh.com. He licenses his work through Science Photo Library in London. He is a Delegate to the International Dark Sky Association and recently completed his Resident Artist Research Project at the Bell Museum in Minneapolis that explores novel immersive experiences for making the night sky and the effects of light pollution more accessible to the general public. 
Join professional landscape photographer Nic Stover for this session to talk about Not too Heavy, Not too Light. Just right. The word “photography” literally means “drawing with light” from the Greek words phos, (genitive: photós) meaning “light”, and graphê meaning “drawing or writing”. There are so many ways to think about the different types of light within our photography and what we can do with what we get in the field but also when we get back in front of our computer to process our images we “harvested” in the field.
Some of the topics covered in this presentation include but are not limited to:
On Saturday, January 16, 3:00 pm, Mike Moats will present “The Properly Equipped Macro Photographer.” Being a properly equipped macro photographer is not just about the equipment, but also equipping yourself with the how-to knowledge of macro photography, how to control depth of field, a little about composition, and subject matter.